Life in Australia is very different from life at home.

Fabulously so…

So far, we have spent a week in a beachfront villa on Moreton Island, a sandbar with stunning beaches, wild dolphins, breathtaking desert views and the thrills of off-road driving to entertain us.

Now we are at my sister’s home up in the Witta hills, near the Glasshouse Mountains. We swelter gently, sleep a lot, paddle in the creek and sit on the deck in the afternoons, seeking any smidgeon of available breeze.

It is all, frankly, pretty blissful.

Last time I came to visit, I discovered the joys of Spotlight. Yesterday, my sister, younger niece and I paid a return visit, whilst the boys took the boogie board to the beach at Caloundra.

For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of Spotlight, it is in some ways a little like Dunelm Mill in the UK, in that it sells homewares of the cheap and cheerful, piled-up-warehouse-style kind.

But Spotlight also has a huge, unbelievably cheap fabric department, which sells both dress and furnishing fabrics.

They had a sale on, so despite my preference for fabric of the vintage variety, I indulged…

The plains are attractive and useful.

But some of the prints are excessively lovely, and less than half what they would cost at home – even if I could find them in my sadly haberdashery-poor local shops…There will be a new kitchen tablecloth when I get home.

And I might even have another go at dressmaking, if I can work out how to alter a pattern to fit me.

The thing is though, I have a sneaking suspicion that I shouldn’t be buying fabrics at Spotlight. Not really.

Because I have a conscience, and I’m not sure that Spotlight does.

Last time I went, I spotted some fabric that looked suspiciously similar (i.e. utterly identical) to a Designers Guild fabric I had admired from a previous season.

And this time around, I noticed this…

This is just part of a fabric design that includes a number of different dolls, printed at a range of sizes.

It enables you to make your own dolls, dolls that look unnervingly similar to designs by fellow-maker Justina of Bea’s Beastlies. Except that hers are handmade with love, in original vintage fabrics.

I think that whoever “designed” this fabric (it is made by an Australian company called Sterns) stole the doll design and put it on a fabric without Justina’s knowledge.

It happens a lot. Intellectual property rights for designers are a joke and your own designs rarely stay your own for long these days.

In fact, I almost expected to see my mini moggies make an appearance in Spotlight’s fabric department. Maybe one day, they will. And unless my sister happens to spot them, I won’t know a thing about it, or receive a penny in recompense either.

By buying cheap fabrics from the likes of Spotlight, I feel that I might be encouraging this practise.

Obviously, I wouldn’t – and haven’t, as far as I know – bought any fabric that I know to be a rip-off of someone else’s design.

But just because I don’t recognise the designs I bought, doesn’t mean that they weren’t originally thought up by some uncredited, unpaid designer.

It leaves a nasty taste. And adds a hidden cost to a bargain…

The price of integrity. ♥